Social housing tenants are suffering just as much as those in the private rented sector, writes Suzanne Muna . Plus letters from Derrick Joad , Rosemary Walker and Bob Colenutt

Thank you for John Harris’s excellent call for politicians to act on the housing crisis ( Neglected, derided and exploited more than ever: why won’t the UK protect those who rent a home?, 24 March ). The Social Housing Action Campaign’s perspective is that we are no longer in a housing crisis. It is system collapse. Tenants and residents in social housing are suffering just as those in the private rented sector. Last year, the vast majority of housing associations utilised the maximum scope allowed by government and increased their rents by 7%. These inflated rents will rise again this year by 7.7%.

Shared owners fare even worse. This tenure is long recognised as combining the worst of both worlds, having to pay rents and mortgages but enduring the full cost of bills, maintenance and repairs for their homes no matter how small the proportion they actually “own”.

Pressure on Michael Gove to act as householders see bills rise 40% , with many saying that they cannot afford to pay

Some of the UK’s largest housing providers have dramatically increased annual service charges by thousands of pounds, plunging residents into financial crisis, an Observer investigation has found.

Many residents who bought shared-ownership properties built as affordable homes have been sent bills in recent weeks with increases of more than 40%. Some say they are unable to sell the properties having now been lumbered with “extortionate” charges and no cap on future increases. More than 1,000 people across the country are now threatening to refuse to pay.

Opposition MPs criticise changes to renters’ reform bill, which cast doubt on removal of no-fault evictions

Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove have been accused of caving in to Tory MPs lobbying in favour of landlords’ interests after it emerged that significant aspects of the renters’ reform bill are to be watered down.

Changes will include an amendment to prevent tenants ending contracts in a tenancy’s first six months, and another casting doubt on the removal of no-fault evictions, a minister told MPs in a leaked letter.

The idea to sell off council houses was Tory bribery, writes Michael Meadowcroft , while Toby Wood laments the decline in state control over housing, and Dr Orest Mulka says Labour should offer private tenants the right to buy

Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy is even more sinister than the rightly critical article by Phineas Harper sets out ( Councils now sell off more houses than they build. Thatcher’s legacy, right to buy, is a failure, 26 March ). Putting it bluntly, it was a brilliant way for the Conservatives to bribe a large sector of mainly Labour voters to switch.

The significant discounts offered made buying one’s council house a huge bargain. What is more, in terms of housing provision, it did not benefit the sitting tenants as much as giving a substantial gift to their children, who often provided the initial capital knowing that they would inherit the house and make a big gain on its sale or on its subsequent letting for profit.

If it gets to No 10, the party should fund a social housing boom, tackle homelessness – and usher in a post-Grenfell era of safety

• Our writers and experts name the pledges Labour must include in its manifesto

The failures in housing policy over several generations are now all too obvious: rising homelessness, families and key workers priced out of cities and a generation unable to move out of their parents’ homes. The next government needs to take radical action to change this picture, rather than make small tweaks to a failed system. These are some of the steps I would take to get there.

Peter Apps is the author of Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen

The right still reveres her flagship policy, but the repercussions are more homelessness, spiralling rents and bankrupt councils

Of all the policies imposed on Britain by Conservative governments, few have reshaped the country’s fortunes as enduringly as right to buy . For a lucky few, the policy has meant colossal windfalls and the chance to snap up some of the best properties in the country on the cheap. For the rest, right to buy has meant rising homelessness, spiralling rents and local authorities facing bankruptcy as the social housing stock dwindles, year by year.

In a mere four decades, Margaret Thatcher’s flagship initiative, forcing councils to sell off public housing at huge discounts, has seen two-thirds of British council homes privatised. City halls across the country are now on the brink of insolvency , in large part due to the enormous cost of having to provide temporary accommodation without enough council-owned homes left to go round.

Phineas Harper is a writer and curator

After he was snatched, Antonio Salazar-Hobson didn’t see his family for 24 years. His desire to return to his mother, and his discovery of a higher purpose, helped him navigate a path through hell

Although it happened more than 60 years ago, Antonio Salazar-Hobson remembers every detail of his kidnapping. He says that if he closes his eyes, he is instantly taken back to that hot Sunday afternoon in 1960 when he was a four-year-old boy standing with his brothers and sisters in the red dust of his back yard on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona.

Nearby, at the bottom of a short passageway connecting the back yard to the road out of town, a car is idling.

Politicians should say how welfare will support claimants with daily living costs rather than stigmatising recipients

Poverty is a political choice – one that Conservative governments have much to answer for. Since 2010, Tory administrations have chosen to have a significant percentage of our population impoverished, including, especially, our country’s children. The Child Poverty Action Group’s analysis of official data last week showed that a third of those between infancy and adulthood – 4.3 million children – were in relative poverty, up from 3.6 million in 2010-11. Even by the government’s preferred measure, absolute poverty, the share of children in penury rose in 2022-23 by its highest rate for 30 years .

No principle of economics says such a degree of immiseration should prevail in one of the richest countries in the world. The reason for this extraordinary rise in poverty ? The most obvious explanation is the low level of benefits and the restrictions on accessing support. Benefit levels have fallen by 8.8% in real terms since 2012. Cutting back on welfare produces more poverty, not less. There is money. But not specifically for the poor. Ministers tout tax cuts worth £9 a week extra for the average worker, while about 3.7m people struggled to feed themselves last year.

Government rule changes on Airbnb-style rentals could lead to loss of more than 10,000 long-term rentable properties

A loophole in government proposals to clamp down on Airbnb-style holiday lets could lead to the loss of thousands of long-term rental properties for families in London.

The government scrapped tax breaks for holiday homes in the budget and last month unveiled a registration scheme to help councils control the booming holiday let market, which Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, claims is denying local people the opportunity to buy or rent a home.